Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University – Week 1

If you’ve never attended or even heard of Financial Peace University, then listen up. Financial Peace University is a 9 week course that covers pretty much every financial topic the typical American family needs to know about. It was developed by Dave Ramsey (the guy on the radio) and his team. Each session covers a specific topic and is comprised of watching a video and then some nonthreatening group discussion. The course is usually put on by local churches all over the country. I highly recommend it if you feel like you’re in need of help with your personal finances, or if you wonder if you could be doing a little better. (Hint, you probably could be doing better.)

Our church is putting on a session at each of their locations. It just so happens that the Saturday one fit best in my schedule this year, so I volunteered to help. So for the next 9 weeks, I’ll be talking about some of the highlights and hopefully entice you to sign up for it in your local area. I’ll admit that not everyone agrees with Dave Ramsey and his approach to each of the topics, and that’s fine. It’s okay to be wrong sometimes.

The first weeks session is Super Saving. It covers the basics of the saving components of the program. Dave breaks down his program into the 7 baby steps. Step 1 is to put $1000 in a baby emergency fund and step 3 is to save up 3 – 6 months of expenses as a fully funded emergency fund. He also covers the basic importance of saving in general. The truth of the matter is that you can’t rely on others to take care of you when you get older, and you’re only hope is save money for yourself.

Of the entire lesson, I think the part that has the biggest impact is the story of Ben and Arthur. In the story, Ben saves $2000 a year for 8 years (age 19 – 26) for a total of $16,000 and then stops. Arthur starts saving at age 27 and saves $2000 a year until the age of 65. The funny thing is that in the end, Arthur never catches up to Ben and Ben ends up having about $750,000 more than Arthur. This alone stresses the importance of saving money and starting early.

If you get nothing else out of reading this blog, understand that it’s important to SAVE MONEY and START NOW!!!! If you have kids, or know anyone in high school or junior high, show them the Ben and Arthur link here. If that doesn’t get them motivated to save money, then we’re all in some deep trouble.